Container Network Interface: Networking for Containers
Shriira Press
The standard that networks every container. Understand CNI — the interface, the plugins (Calico, Cilium, Flannel), IPAM, network policy, and Kubernetes pod networking.
Welcome to Container Network Interface: Networking for Containers.
The Container Network Interface (CNI) is the standard that decouples container platforms from container networking — defining how a runtime invokes a plugin to give each container its network. This free book teaches it from the ground up: what CNI is and the problem it solves, container networking fundamentals (namespaces, veth pairs, bridges, overlays, routing), the CNI specification (the ADD/DEL contract, the exec model, JSON config, plugin chaining), CNI plugins (reference plugins and full networking solutions), IP address management (IPAM), how Kubernetes uses CNI for pod networking (the flat-network model), the major plugins (Flannel, Calico, Cilium, Weave, cloud CNIs) and how they compare, network policy (securing pod traffic, enforced by capable CNIs), performance and dataplanes (overlay vs routing, iptables vs eBPF), and choosing and operating a CNI plugin in practice. Ten focused chapters with clear diagrams that demystify how every container — and every Kubernetes pod — gets its place on the network.
This title is part of the ShriIra library and is free to read in full, right here — our small contribution to making world-class knowledge easy to reach.
A note on reading it: open the Contents menu at the top of the reader to jump between chapters, use the Aa menu to set a comfortable text size, theme (light, sepia, or night), and single- or two-page layout. Your place is saved automatically, so you can always pick up where you left off.
We hope it serves you well.
— Shriira Press